41405713
submission
AcidAUS writes:
A little over a decade ago, just before the masses discovered the digital universe, the internet was a borderless new frontier: a terra nullius to be populated by individuals, groups and programmers as they saw fit. There were few rules and no boundaries. Freedom and open standards, sharing information for the greater good was the ethos. Today, the open internet we once knew is fracturing into a series of gated communities or fiefdoms controlled by giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and to a lesser extent Microsoft. A billion-dollar battle conducted in walled cities where companies try to lock our consumption into their vision of the internet. It has left some lamenting the ''web we lost''.
18922988
submission
AcidAUS writes:
The global chairman and CEO of home networking giant Netgear has launched into a scathing attack on Apple and its founder Steve Jobs, criticising Jobs's "ego" and Apple's closed up products. At a lunch in Sydney today, Patrick Lo said Apple's success was centred on closed and proprietary products that would soon be overtaken by open platforms like Google's Android.
11346340
submission
AcidAUS writes:
The founder of WikiLeaks lives a secret life in the shadow of those who blow the whistle. A detailed profile of the Australian founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, by Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald.
1314819
submission
AcidAUS writes:
Last week's bust of the largest spam operation in the world has had no measurable impact on global spam volumes. The spam gang, known by authorities and security experts as HerbalKing, was responsible for one-third of all spam, the non-profit antispam research group SpamHaus said.
1218399
submission
AcidAUS writes:
Detective work by an Australian online poker player has uncovered a $US10 million cheating scandal at two major poker websites and triggered a $US75 million legal claim. In two separate cases, Michael Josem, from Chatswood, analysed detailed hand history data from Absolute Poker and UltimateBet and uncovered that certain player accounts won money at a rate too fast to be legitimate. His findings led to an internal investigation by the parent company that owns both sites. It found rogue employees had defrauded players over three years via a security hole that allowed the cheats to see other player's secret (or hole) cards.
837031
submission
AcidAUS writes:
THE Nigerian high commissioner in Australia says people who are ripped off by so-called Nigerian scams are just as guilty as the fraudsters and should be jailed. Responding to a story in yesterday's Herald, which revealed Australians lose at least $36 million a year to the online scams, Sunday Olu Agbi said Australians had failed to heed repeated warnings not to deal with shady characters on the internet.
551376
submission
AcidAUS writes:
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak heaped less than lavish praise on the company's iPhone, MacBook Air and Apple TV products when visiting Sydney this morning. Wozniak said he was puzzled by the lack of 3G support on the iPhone and that he didn't believe the MacBook Air would be a hit.
379757
submission
AcidAUS writes:
The Swedish hacker, Dan Egerstad, who perpetrated the so-called hack of the year, has been arrested in a dramatic raid on his apartment, during which he was taken in for questioning and several of his computers confiscated. Egerstad broke into the global communications network used by embassies around the world in August and gained access to 1000 sensitive email accounts.
51294
submission
AcidAUS writes:
The widely-publicised reforms to Australian copyright — which would turn iPod, camera phone and DVD recorder owners into criminals — have been significantly amended. The laws are far more relaxed now, but they're far from perfect.
47926
submission
AcidAUS writes:
Australia's Sydney Airport is investigating high-tech tagging methods for baggage handling, which could greatly reduce the number of bags that go missing each year. Industry experts say that baggage mishandling costs the industry globally $US1.7 billion each year, and that much of this cost is due to failures in the barcode-based tagging system.
26032
submission
AcidAUS writes:
Google is being accused of refusing to remove racist blogs targeting minority groups in Australia. Google, whose corporate motto is "don't be evil", says it will take the blogs in question offline only if ordered to do so by a court.
1916
submission
AcidAUS writes:
Current wireless networking standards aren't fit for streaming high-definition (HD) content between a media centre PC and multiple extender devices, according to Intel and Microsoft. An Intel rep told CNET.com.au that "A recommendation from the Viiv spec is that high-definition should be wired at this moment".
